Abstract
M.Ing.
This report addresses an empirical study into the re-structuring of
Transnet group of companies. The study is based on the outcome of
the re-engineering process focusing on Spoornet as a member of
Transnet. The departments partially studied are, the Infrastructure
Maintenance department and Train Operations department with-in
Spoornet.
The objective of this study is to achieve a break-even point between
maintenance and the business side so as to increase operational profit
in Spoornet.
Outsourcing is a management tool used to make more profit. It is also
a way of getting rid of unwanted business units. This will help
increase shareholder value and reduce operating costs so that
management can focus on core business units. The results expected
from outsourcing in this study are aligned with the business process
engineering "BPR" results. From the BPR results the business units were classified as core and
non-core business units. Non-core business units were discontinued
while core business units were further classified into core department,
which is the running of trains, and the non-core department as
maintenance departments. The maintenance departments are fully
represented on a functional level while they used to have a full
representative on the corporate level before restructuring.
Cutting-off these logistic support departments at a corporate level, can
have an effect on maintenance being undermined due to lack of
specialists input at a higher level in terms of systems engineering and
maintenance. This can lead to system's lack of maintenance and an
increase in systems failure, making the system un-reliable and unsafe for the passage of trains while on the other hand the business will be
lost back to the competitors, who in this case is the road freight
business.
A case study is discussed in the dissertation where value added
techniques such as the business turnaround process, outsourcing
and Integrated Logistic Support "maintenance" were applied in this
study.